The great youth debate has settled upon England, the oldest nation in soccer.

For the better part of half a century, the English had a conservative attitude toward the sport they gave to the world. The old country watched, amazed, when Brazil thrust the 17-year-old Edson Arantes do Nascimento (alias Pelé) into the 1958 World Cup in Sweden.

They considered it rash of West Germany to give Franz Beckenbauer license to change the way his national side played when he was barely 20 in the 1960s. In the 1980s, Italy gave Guiseppe Bergomi a cap when he was 18, and had played only 30 games for his club, Inter Milan. Portugal suited up a young fellow, Eusebio, almost as soon as he moved from Mozambique to the Lisbon club Benfica as a teenager in 1961.

Michael Owen became England’s youngest national team tournament goal-scorer at 18 in 1998, but he proved an exception to the rule. National team soccer, the English Football Association believed, was a job for mature men.

Now, however, England has thrown reluctance to the wind and gone for six players aged 22 or younger for this World Cup.

The old-school managers, coaches and doctors had a point. Even Pelé, genius though he proved to be from the start, was believed to be too young, too immature, by the Brazil team psychologist who told the coach not to pick so precocious a player. Brazil won that 1958 World Cup and Pelé was the star, along with Garrincha, whom the psychologist also considered too “infantile” for selection.

Fast forward to today, and attitudes have changed around the world.

Belgium has two teenagers, Adnan Januzaj and Divock Origi, in their party of 23 players. The Swiss have a young team (average age 26), boosted by immigrant sons from the Balkans. The Dutch have a 20-year-old striker, Memphis De Pay, and Germany has selected the midfielder Julian Draxler at the same age. France has the rising star Paul Pogba, 21, in midfield. Even Brazil, with hundreds of players to choose from, has a 21-year-old, Bernard, and a 22-year-old, Oscar, on the roster.

For England, the left back Luke Shaw, 18, is the baby of the pack and will get game time only if Leighton Baines, 29, the senior man in his position, gets injured or needs replacing through fatigue. Raheem Sterling, the 19-year-old Liverpool forward who has pace to play on the wing or guile to dart through the middle, is considered by many to be an essential attacking player for England — although a red card for a reckless tackle against Ecuador in a friendly in Miami last week suggested the impetuosity of youth carries its risks.

In the same game, Arsenal’s Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, 20, was England’s most dynamic counter-attacker until he suffered a knee injury in a jarring challenge. It appeared to be touch-and-go whether he can recover in time for the World Cup, but England is taking him to Brazil and will work on him until the last possible moment.

Oxlade-Chamberlain is considered almost an irreplaceable English talent at 20. He has youth, vigor, belief, and a big-game temperament already proven in the Champions League for Arsenal. His club teammate Jack Wilshere is much older (he’s 22) but has battled through recurring ankle injuries to claim a place on the national roster.

That place, indeed the senior role of Wayne Rooney, 28, as a link between midfield and attack, is under serious challenge from another rising star, Everton’s 20-year-old Ross Barkley.

Barkley’s career progression was hampered by injury when he suffered a broken leg in his teens. But in his come-back season, and in England’s warm-up matches for the World Cup, Barkley has lived up to claims that he has the moves that can unlock tight defenses, either to strike for goal or to create for others.

“He’s a phenomenal talent,” Barkley’s team manager at Everton, Roberto Martínez, told reporters during the Premier League season. “Ross is the best English talent I’ve worked with. We need to give him good care and support him to fulfill his potential because he’s going to be terrific news for Everton and English football. If he is called upon, he’ll be ready.”

In the games en route to Brazil, England has seen periods of dazzling absence of inhibition from its youth. To see Barkley run and weave with the ball or watch Wilshere and Sterling deceive opponents by dodging the path of the ball altogether is a welcome sight.

“The reason I’ve chosen the young players — and I’ve said this to them — is that you’re here on merit,” Roy Hodgson, the veteran England team manager, said at a news conference in Miami.

“I didn’t choose you because you’re enjoying a moment of fame and you’re getting good reviews in the press, people are excited about you because as yet, you haven’t had a chance to fail on the big stage,” he added. “I’ve chosen you because I think you’ve got the ability to be top-class players.”

What he doesn’t mention is another major factor: Less than a third of the players regularly starting for teams in England’s Premier League are eligible to play for England; the great majority of the league’s players are foreign, imported because their skills are deemed superior to those of the locals. The fact that each of the young men trusted by Hodgson play most weeks in the Premier League is why he thinks they’re capable.

Hodgson, 66, is a well-travelled fellow. He has managed clubs and national teams in Scandinavia, the Middle East and Europe. His reputation is that of a cautious manager, tactically at least, and he knows that the group England has drawn — starting Saturday against Italy in Manaus, and also including Uruguay and Costa Rica — will test every nerve and sinew he can call upon.

The coach is not picking youth for the sake of it. Most commentators are predicting that Hodgson will start with experience against Italy on Saturday and only bring on the young players when both sides start wilting in the heat.

In any case, Hodgson says only that he has not picked players according to date of birth. “A player of his type,” he said of Barkley, “has the confidence and is prepared to take an awful lot of risks with the ball. But he’s not here to learn; he’s here to play.”